Friends more than 60 years

Lakeville class of '46 reunion near, but these classmates always stay in touch.

Lakeville class of '46 reunion near, but these classmates always stay in touch.

April 28, 2006|JENNIFER OCHSTEIN Tribune Correspondent

It all started in first grade, as Jean Taylor likes to tell it. And the rest? Well, just go out to lunch sometime with the girls of the Lakeville High School class of 1946 and you'll get the picture. You may hear about the time Louise McQueen, "Queenie" to her friends, stole her dad's tractor in high school; how many of them were taken to school in a "school hack" -- a box on wheels pulled by a horse; or how Taylor and Wilma Jensen were walking across the ice on the lake when the ice broke and Taylor's leg went in up to ... you get the picture. "She laughed," Taylor said, looking at Jensen. Or maybe Jensen will tell you about the times her friends surrounded her when each of her three husbands died. Now, they tell her she can't get married again -- they don't think they could handle another husband passing away. Most of them have known each other for well over 60 years. On May 5, graduates of Lakeville High School class of 1946 are reuniting. On May 6, all alumni of Lakeville High School are invited to the alumni banquet. Both will take place at the Newton Center on U.S. 31 in Lakeville, which is the old Lakeville High School. But the women of the class of '46 certainly don't need and have never needed a class reunion to get together. "It's just a fun group," said Darlene Carlton, sandwiched between Taylor and Jensen during one of their monthly lunch-time outings at Reggio's in Mishawaka. "Either that or we're senile and we don't know any better." Whether they know better or not, it seems nothing can tear them apart. When asked what they mean to each other, they all chimed in: "We've all become such close friends that I don't know what I'd do without these girls," said Taylor. "We love each other," Balmer said. "I don't have a sister, and I can think of them as my sisters." "They mean everything to me," Taylor added. "I like to come (to lunch) best when I'm depressed because I don't leave depressed," said McQueen, who didn't graduate from Lakeville High School with the rest of her friends. She attended the school in seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th grades before her family moved to Mishawaka. She graduated from Mishawaka High School. They have been getting together as a group for lunch for the past 15 years, but many of them have kept in close contact with each for many more years. Jensen and Taylor live five minutes apart. Many of them stood up at each other's weddings, and they helped raise each other's children. And more than getting together for lunch at a different place each month and as much as they love each other, it seems the women of the class of 1946 just like to laugh -- at each other and at themselves. And they laugh a lot. And concerning the men of the class of 1946 -- some of whom are married to the women of the class of 1946 -- the women agreed: the men will have to get together on their own. The girls have lunch all wrapped up.